Consciousness pervades everything. In me Consciousness makes me conscious, aware. Otherwise I am alternatively aware, at sleep, dreaming, unconscious, or dead. Consciousness is the driving force and the One background. All of us exist on this background and imagine our own individual separate existence, when in actuality, its all One. The little packet of Consciousness which I call 'I/Me' thus initially differentiates the 'me' and the world around me as the 'not-me' and as 'other'.
This limited selfishness in identity and actions creates problems which cause pain, disease, delays, disappointments, death...They in turn afford opportunities for us to learn and evolve in Consciousness. Initially, problems are blamed on external sources and causes and solutions too are sought externally, for example: Technology. The realization that 'All problems affecting us are made by ourselves' & 'All my problems are self-made' happens. Realising for the first time that others too are in pain, selfish individuals grow more aware and begin to share and help others. Cooperation happens instead of competition. Taking responsibility for one's actions instead of blaming it on 'external' factors happens. In a higher state, realization happens that since the problem started from me, the solution too lies in me. So from a individual and self-identifying selfish animal existence, man evolves to a unselfish, self-forgetting higher man, aware of the Unity of all as One.
"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world"-Dhammapada
This is the story of evolution on earth in a nutshell. It is the story of 'Evolution of Consciousness" which can be understood and utilized to solve all human problems because the human being is central to existence and 'all my problems are self-made'.. I am the center of my existence. That is why all philosophies exhort one to "Know Thyself" instead of exploring or working with the external world.
Normally the evolution form an unaware lower animal selfish state to a higher altruistic state happens through nature created hurdles. When one realises that the problems are only the nature's messengers/symptoms and the real message is to evolve higher, nature leaves us on our own as we have matured from the 'teenager' state to responsible adulthood. Here we are expected to make our own choices, keeping the 'natural plan of earth' in mind. Resources such as the body, family, society, the environment, technology are expected to be used wisely only for the welfare of others. This limited freedom of action is known as free will. We are expected to use this free will and make choices leading to actions with the welfare of mankind in mind. This conscious and aware altruistic action is aided by nature(stardom, political office, leadership..). However if we misuse nature's freedom and power for our own selfish desires, we experience the 'fall' once again. A conscious self-effort to free the mind from the thralldom and lower attractions of material desires is called Yoga, with which one attaches or yokes oneself to the highest Consciousness.
This understanding of Consciousness can be used to alter and transform human nature from lower selfish states to higher altruistic states, cure over consumption/addiction and create sustainable natural cooperation instead of artificial competition and conflict.
Translations into practical implementable models needed. Please contribute your expertise.
Hi Raveendra, excellent question and well explained. I have come across two academic reference sources outside religious studies literatures; you may have as well, but they are worth recounting in the context of this question.
The first is Don Beck and the work he and others have done around Spiral Dynamics. There's plenty out there, here are two. Fascinating stuff:
- Beck, D. and C. C. Cowan (1996). Spiral dynamics: Mastering values, leadership, and change: exploring the new science of memetics, Blackwell Business (Cambridge, Mass., USA).
- Roemischer, J. (2002). The never-ending upward quest: the practical & spiritual wisdom of spiral dynamics. What is Enlightenment, EnlightenNext Media: 105-126.
The other source is of course Ken Wilber and the sphere of Integral Theory, Integral Ecology, Integral Sustainable Development, etc. A few sources include:
- Wilber, K. (2004). "Introduction to Integral Theory and Practice." Journal of Integral Theory and Practice 1(1).
- Esbjörn-Hargens, S. and M. Zimmerman (2009). Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World, Shambhala Publications.
- Brown, B. C. (2004). "Theory and Practice of Integral Sustainable Development: PART 1 - QUADRANTS AND THE PRACTITIONER." Journal of Integral Theory and Practice 1(2).
- Patten, T. (2013). Enacting an Integral Revolution: How Can We Have Truly Radical Conversations in a Time of Global Crisis? Integral Theory Conference 2013.
Definitely food for thought...
All the best, Richard
Interesting question! Defining consciousness is tricky and complicated, but for my answer I will stick with the classical "ability to have subjective experiences" definition. The other 2 things I need to make clear is that I think consciousness resides in the brain of the experiencer and only there and consciousness is created somehow (the hard problem) from a physical system; I don’t believe consciousness is created by some kind of "strange matter".
So... Does consciousness evolve? Has consciousness been an adaptive feature? I would say it could be, but we can easily imagine a completely adapted organism without consciousness. We can also imagine a human being that behaves exactly as us, but without any kind of subjective experience happening inside him (the famous/infamous philosophical zombie). I would say consciousness is an emergent phenomenon; emergent in the sense that it can’t be reduced to a sum of the parts. We could be tempted to say consciousness is equal to awareness+attention+perception+etc... But it doesn't. If so, we could easily dissect consciousness into its parts and after understanding each of those we could magically understand how consciousness is created. Consciousness is more like an epiphenomenon that requires a lot of different neural substrates (attention, awareness, perception..) but is not the sum of those. It emerges from them.
So does consciousness evolved? I think not. I think those substrates from which consciousness emerges were selected by natural selection because they clearly offer some kind of benefit and as a consequence (a beautiful one) consciousness emerged.
Does this change something in the way we should solve the humankind problems? Not really; it doesn’t matter how it evolved, how is really created or even if it exists: we are bound to that subjective experience of having subjective experiences. We can't stop having them! I think as conscious beings our responsibility is to live and transcend. It is much more difficult to live as conscious beings, it would be much easier and comforting to just exist and don’t "be". We cannot extinguish suffering, pain, sadness. We can’t because to do so, we would need to extinguish ourselves and our own consciousness. But it is not that grim, happiness, fullfilness, pleasure; all those subjective experiences are also part of our own stream of consciousness. What we should do as specie is to try to make those subjective experiences universal and available to all conscious beings. It is our responsibility to ensure all conscious beings enough welfare so this "beneficial subjective experiences" are able to emerge.
Just my opinion!
Dear Raveendra,
please take a look at these courses: http://lilleoru.ee/en/course-art-of-conscious-change-ingvar-villido-ishwarananda.
Also, you can find answers from practitioners using these teachings.
And this upcoming conference on the same topic:
http://consciousinitiative.com/2015-conscious-entrepreneurship-creativity-innovation/
Greetings,
Angelina
Hi Ravi,
These papers may offer some insights
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236941623_Building_a_knowledge_society_one_individual_at_a_time_a_multi-level_review
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299747565_Towards_a_talent-driven_outward-oriented_globally-competitive_SME_framework_Discussion_Paper
Working Paper Building a knowledge society one individual at a time: a mul...
Technical Report Towards a talent-driven outward-oriented globally-competitiv...
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